NC emerges dark horse in LC polls, wins two seats

Amir Karim Tantray

Tribune News Service

Jammu, March 2

The National Conference (NC) today emerged as a dark horse in the Legislative Council (LC) elections when it managed to grab two out of six seats, despite having less number of MLAs.

The Peoples Democratic Party (PDP)-Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) coalition was able to win four seats.

From the NC, Sajjad Ahmed Kichloo and Qaider Jamsheed Lone emerged victorious, whereas from the PDP, Surinder Choudhary and Javed Ahmed Mirchal won. Vibodh Gupta and Charanjeet Singh Khalsa of the BJP were also elected to the LC.

Kichloo, Choudhary, Gupta, Khalsa and Ramesh Arora were contesting for four seats of the Jammu region, whereas Lone, Mirchal and Bhat were contesting for two seats of the Kashmir valley. For four Jammu seats, Kichloo got 29 votes, Choudhary 21, Khalsa 18 and Gupta got 19 votes. Whereas Ramesh Arora pulled away from the contest this morning and not a single vote was polled in his favour.

The contest was on two seats of the Kashmir valley, where the PDP had fielded Mirchal and Saifuddin Bhat and the NC had fielded Lone. After two women were nominated to the Legislative Assembly yesterday, the position of the PDP-BJP coalition was strong. They had also been able to get the support of Independent MLA from Langate, Engineer Abdul Rashid, which had made their case strong to win both the seats.

After Rashid offered his support to the PDP, the NC was having support of only 29 MLAs — 15 of the NC, 12 of the Congress and two Independents. Whereas the PDP-BJP coalition had the support of 60 MLAs, 29 of the PDP, 26 of the BJP, two of the Peoples Conference (PC) and three Independents.

Things took a turn when one extra vote was polled in favour of NC candidate Lone, who got 30 votes, which was enough for him to win. The PDP’s Mirchal got 30 and Bhat got 29 votes.

During the day, the MLAs were showing their votes to polling agents of their respective parties and it was only Independents and two PC MLAs who were not suppose to show their votes to anyone.

It is obvious that one of these MLAs has cross-voted and ensured the NC’s win.